Japan's Manga Publishers Beat Anime Studios Into India

India Japan Kaizen — Pop Culture Bridge Series, Part 4

Part 1 of this series opened with the headline numbers — Japan's anime industry crossing $25 billion in a single year, India already its third-largest audience by viewership. Part 2 traced that scale down to specific deals: a dozen-plus Indian states funding AVGC policy, and two concrete production tie-ups — Toonz Media Group's alliance with Tokyo's 1st PLACE, and Geek Pictures India's original anime Panchsheela — finally giving that policy spend something to point at. Part 3 added the sobering context (a Teikoku Databank survey showing most Japanese anime studios aren't actually profitable) and previewed this week's test case: JETRO's business-matching program at Mela! Mela! Anime Japan!! 2026 in Delhi. That festival has now happened. Neither of Part 2's two anime deals moved, and the audio-visual co-production treaty gap is exactly where it was. But two entirely different companies — both Japanese publishers, neither an anime studio — used the same week to do something the anime side still hasn't: actually incorporate in India.

What Actually Came Out of Mela! Mela! 2026

Mela! Mela! Anime Japan!! 2026 ran as scheduled on October 3-4 at Pacific Mall Tagore Garden in New Delhi — its third Delhi edition, still backed by Dentsu India alongside its sponsor roster. JETRO's business-matching program, the piece Part 3 flagged as the first real infrastructure connecting India's state-level AVGC policy money to Japan's studio-to-studio dealmaking, ran alongside it as planned: interested Japanese companies paired with Indian counterparts for up to five one-on-one meetings each, across licensing, content distribution, co-production, commercialization, and marketing. The clearest new number to come out of it isn't a deal — it's the program's own growth. The pool of companies JETRO matched more than doubled, from eight last year to nineteen this year. That's a real sign the matchmaking infrastructure itself is scaling, even though JETRO hasn't published a results readout naming a signed deal or MOU to go with it. This series will keep checking for one.

Kodansha Sets Up Shop in India

Kodansha — the publisher behind Attack on Titan and one of Japan's largest manga houses — used the same week to confirm something considerably more concrete than a meeting: a local subsidiary. Kodansha India Private Limited is a joint venture with Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) and a partner called IJ Kakehashi Services, headquartered in Delhi, with Kodansha holding 81%, DNP 14%, and IJ Kakehashi 5%. Paid-up capital is listed at ₹9.5 crore (roughly $1.1 million), and the venture is run by Hirotoshi Kurita, a Kodansha board director. The plan is roughly 200 manga titles a year in English and Hindi, targeting billions of yen in annual sales, with operations beginning this autumn. It's reportedly the first time a major Japanese general-interest publisher has set up a local Indian entity for physical manga and book publishing, rather than licensing translation rights to an existing Indian publisher — and Kodansha had a booth on the festival floor to introduce it.

Poplar Follows, Aimed at a Younger Reader

Poplar Publishing, the company behind the long-running children's series Kaiketsu Zorori, got there first, setting up its own Delhi subsidiary in mid-September — just ahead of the festival where it, too, had a booth. Poplar's plan skews younger and slower: English- and Hindi-language editions aren't due to start until January 2027, with around 40 titles from Japan's bestseller lists planned for the first year, led by Kaiketsu Zorori itself. Between Kodansha's manga and Poplar's children's books, two different slices of Japan's publishing industry picked the same month to bet on direct operations in India, rather than waiting for a distributor, a treaty, or a festival deal to do it for them.

A Summit Full of Words, a Treaty List That Hasn't Moved

The contrast is sharper because of what happened one tier up. In July, Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Takaichi held the 16th India-Japan Annual Summit, producing roughly 120 agreements and announcements spanning economic security, AI, energy resilience, and defense co-development. The joint statement explicitly "appreciated ongoing intellectual and cultural exchanges" between the two countries and "highlighted the important role played by creative industries such as anime, manga, gaming and films." That's the most direct acknowledgment this series has seen of pop culture as a named priority at the leaders' level — and it changed nothing on the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting's Audio-Visual Co-Production Agreement list, which still runs from Italy and the UK (2005) through Israel (2018) without Japan anywhere on it. The 2013 MOU this series has tracked from the start remains exactly what Part 2 and Part 3 both called it: a working group, not a treaty.

Where Part 2's Two Anime Deals Stand

Neither of the production stories at the center of this series has moved. Toonz Media Group's alliance with Tokyo's 1st PLACE, signed in March 2025, still hasn't produced a finished, released title carrying both studios' credits. Geek Pictures India's Panchsheela, unveiled at Anime India Mumbai in late August, still has no announced release date or streaming platform as of the most recent public update in early September. Both remain exactly where Part 3 left them — real partnerships, no finished product yet to show for it.

What's Missing

That split is the real finding of Part 4. The anime side of this series — the two deals it has tracked longest, plus the audio-visual treaty question — hasn't produced a finished product or a signed government agreement in four parts and counting, even with a leaders' summit naming anime and manga as priorities. The publishing side, which this series hadn't covered at all before this week, produced two incorporated India subsidiaries in the same month without needing a treaty or a festival meeting to do it. What's still missing is a comparable, named outcome from this year's JETRO matchmaking — and the next calendar date that could supply one is Tokyo's own: TIFFCOM 2026 runs October 28-30, with a dedicated conference on structuring and financing international anime co-productions. No India-specific session has been confirmed yet, but it's the first venue after this week's Delhi matchmaking where the actual financing mechanics of an India-Japan anime deal might get discussed in public.

If you work in manga or book publishing, anime or AVGC production, or took a meeting at Mela! Mela! Anime Japan!! 2026's JETRO matchmaking sessions in Delhi — get in touch. This is exactly the kind of introduction India Japan Kaizen wants to help make.

This is Part 4 of India Japan Kaizen's Pop Culture Bridge Series. Part 5 will check whether TIFFCOM 2026's anime co-production conference in Tokyo (October 28-30) produces anything India-specific, look for a named deal out of this year's JETRO matchmaking in Delhi, and check in again on Panchsheela and the Toonz-1st PLACE alliance.